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presence he dare not attempt deception, even if inclined. But he is not. Between questioner and questioned the aim and end are similar, if not the same. Besides, the peon’s blood has again been warmed up, and his tongue set loose, by a fresh infusion of aguardiente—so that his confessions are full as free. He tells about the life led by the Mexican refugees, as also their American guests—all he knows, and this is nearly everything. For trusted, unsuspected, he has had every opportunity to learn. The only thing concealed by him is his own love affair with Conchita and its disastrous ending, through the intrusion of the Texan Ranger.

This, if told, would give his listener slight concern, alongside the grave impressions made upon him by another affair; some particulars of which the peon communicates. These points refer to tender relations existing between the young prairie trader and Adela Miranda, almost proving their existence. Confirmed or not, on hearing of them Gil Uraga receives a shock which sends the blood rushing in quick current through his veins; while upon his countenance comes an expression of such bitter malignity, that the traitor, in fear for his own safety, repents having told him.

But Uraga has no spite against him—no motive for having it. On the contrary, he intends rewarding him, after he gets out of him certain other services for which he is to be retained.

When his cross-questioning is at length brought to a close, he is once more committed to the charge of the guard-corporal, with orders to be returned to the prison. At the same time a hint is given him that his incarceration is only precautionary, with a promise it will not be for long.

Immediately after his removal, Uraga seats himself before an escritoire, which stands on one side of the room. Laying open the lid, he spreads a sheet of paper upon it, and commences to write what appears an epistle.

Whatever it is, the composition occupies some considerable time. Occasionally he stops using the pen, as though pondering what to put down.

When it is at length completed, apparently to his satisfaction, he folds the sheet, thrusts a stick of wax into the flame of a candle, and seals the document, but without using any seal-stamp. A small silver coin taken from his pocket makes the necessary impression. There does not appear to be any name appended to the epistle, if one it is; and the superscription shows only two words, without any address. The words are “El Barbato.”

Again ringing the bell, the same servant answers it.

“Go to the stables,” commands his master, “or the corral, or wherever he may be, and tell Pedrillo I want him. Be quick about it!”

The man bows and disappears.

“It will take them—how many days to reach the Tenawas’ town, and how many back to the Pecos?” soliloquises Uraga, pacing the floor, as he makes his calculations. “Three, four, five. No matter. If before them we can wait till they come. Pedrillo!”

Pedrillo has put in an appearance. He is an Indian of the tame sort, not greatly differing from the man Manuel, with a countenance quite as forbidding. But we have seen Pedrillo before; since he was one of the two muleteers who conducted the atajo transporting the spoil from the caravan of the prairie traders.

“Pedrillo,” directs the Colonel, “catch a couple of the best roadsters in the corral—one for yourself, the other for José. Have them saddled, and get yourselves ready for a journey of two weeks, or so. Make all haste with your preparations. When ready, come here, and report yourself.”

The muleteer disappears, and Uraga continues to pace the floor, apparently yet busied with a mental measurement of time and distance. At intervals he stops before the portrait on the wall, and for a second or two gazes at it. This seems to increase his impatience for the man’s reappearance.

He has not a great while to wait. The scrip and staff of a New Mexican traveller of Pedrillo’s kind is of no great bulk or complexity. It takes but a short time to prepare it. A few tortillas and frijoles, a head or two of chile Colorado, half a dozen onions, and a bunch of tasojo—jerked beef. Having collected these comestibles, and filled his xuaje, or water gourd, Pedrillo reports himself ready for the road, or trail, or whatever sort of path, and on whatever errand, it may please his master to despatch him.

“You will go straight to the Tenawa town—Horned Lizard’s—on the south branch of the Goo-al-pah. You can find your way to the place, Pedrillo. You’ve been there before?”

The Indian nods an affirmative.

“Take this.” Here Uraga hands him the sealed paper. “See you show it to no one you may chance to meet passing out from the settlements. Give it to Barbato, or hand it to the Horned Lizard himself. He’ll know who it’s for. You are to ride night and day, as fast as the animals can carry you. When you’ve delivered it you needn’t wait, but come back—not here, but to the Alamo. You know the place—where we met the Tenawas some weeks ago. You will find me there. Vaya!”

On receiving these instructions Pedrillo vanishes from, the room; a strange sinister glance in his oblique Indian eyes telling that he knows himself to be once more—what he has often been—an emissary of evil.

Uraga takes another turn across the floor, then, seating himself by the table, seeks rest for his passion-tossed soul by drinking deep of the mescal of Tequila.

Chapter Forty Five. The Staked Plain.

The elevated table-land known as Llano Estacado is in length over three hundred miles, with an average width of sixty or seventy. It extends longitudinally between the former Spanish provinces of New Mexico and Texas; their respective capitals, Santa Fé and San Antonia de Bejar, being on the opposite side of it. In the days of vice-royal rule, a military road ran across it, connecting the two provincial centres, and mule trains of traders passed to and fro between. As this road was only a trail, often obliterated by the drifting sands of the desert, tall stakes were set up at intervals to indicate the route. Hence the name “Llano Estacado”—literally, Staked Plain.

In those days Spain was a strong, enterprising nation, and her Mexican colonists could travel over most parts of their vast territory without fear of being assaulted by the savages. At a later period, when Spanish power began to decline, all this became changed. Cities fell to ruin, settlements were deserted, mission establishments abandoned, and in the provinces of Northern Mexico white travellers had to be cautious in keeping to the most frequented roads, in some districts not daring even to venture beyond the walls of their haciendas or towns. Many of these were fortified against Indian attack, and are so to this day.

Under these circumstances the old Spanish trail across the Staked Plain fell into disuse; its landmarks became lost, and of late years only expeditions of the United States army have traversed it for purposes of exploration.

In physical aspect it bears resemblance to the table lands of Abyssinia and Southern Arabia, and at its northern end many outlying spurs and detached mesas remind the traveller of the Abyssinian hills—known as ambas. A portion of this singular territory belongs to the great gypsum formation of the south-western prairies, perhaps the largest in the world; while a highly-coloured sandstone of various vivid hues, often ferruginous, forms a conspicuous feature in its cliffs. Along its eastern edge these present to the lower champaign of Texas a precipitous escarpment several hundred feet sheer, in long stretches, tending with an unbroken façade, in other places showing ragged, where cleft by canons, through which rush torrents, the heads of numerous Texan streams. Its surface is, for the most part, a dead horizontal level, sterile as the Sahara itself, in places smooth and hard as a macadamised road. Towards its southern end there is a group of medanos (sandhills), covering a tract of several hundred square miles, the sand ever drifting about, as with dunes on the seashore. High up among their summits is a lakelet of pure drinking water, though not a drop can be found upon the plateau itself for scores of miles around. Sedge and lilies grow by this tarn so singularly situated.

Here and there the plain is indented by deep fissures (barrancas), apparently the work of water. Often the traveller comes upon them without sign or warning of their proximity, till, standing on the edge of a precipitous escarpment, he sees yawning below a chasm sunk several hundred feet into the earth. In its bed may be loose boulders piled in chaotic confusion, as if cast there by the hands of Titans; also trunks of trees in a fossilised state such as those observed by Darwin on the eastern declivity of the Chilian Andres.

Nearly all the streams that head in the Staked Plain cut deep channels in their way to the outer world. These are often impassable, either transversely or along their course. Sometimes, however, their beds are worn out into little valleys, or “coves,” in which a luxuriant vegetation finds shelter and congenial soil. There flourish the pecan, the hackberry, the black walnut, the wild china, with evergreen oaks, plums, and clustering grapevines; while in the sterile plain above are only seen those forms of the botanical world that truly indicate the desert—various species of cactaceae, agaves, and yuccas—the palmilla and lechuguilla, dwarf-cedars, and mezquites, artemisia, and the strong-smelling larrea, or “creosote plant.”

Animals are rare upon the Llano Estacado, although the prong-horn antelope—true denizen of the desert—is there found, as also its enemy, the Mexican jackal, or coyote. To the rattlesnake and horned lizard (agama) it is a congenial home; and the singular snake-bird (paisano) may frequently be seen running over the arid waste, or skulking through the tortuous stems of the nopals. In the canons of the stream the grizzly bear makes his haunt, and in times not long gone by it was ascended and traversed by the unwieldy buffalo. The wild horse (musteno) still occasionally courses across it.

Of all the living things it is least frequented by man. Even the Indian rarely strays into its solitudes; and the white man, when necessitated to enter them, does so with fear and trembling, for he knows there is danger.

This is chiefly due to the absence of water; but there is also the chance of going astray—getting lost in the absence of landmarks. To be astray in a wilderness of any kind is a perilous predicament for the traveller—in one without water it is death.

After their affair with the Tenawas, the Texan Rangers directed their course towards the Llano Estacado. On starting, it was their intention to strike north, and get upon the main stream of the Canadian, then follow it up to the place where the prairie traders met their murderous doom. From the country of the Tenawa Comanches this would be the correct route, and was the same taken by these freebooters returning with the spoils of the caravan. But from the mouth of the Pecan Creek is one more direct, leading across a spur of the plateau itself, instead of turning its north-eastern extremity.

It was not known to the Rangers, though Cully remembered having heard something about it. But the Mexican renegade declared himself familiar with, and counselled taking it. There had been hesitation before acceding to his counsel. Of course, they could have no confidence in such a man, but rather suspicion of all he said or did. In guiding them across the Staked Plain he might have some sinister purpose—perhaps lead them into a trap.

After all, how could he? The tribe of savages with which he had been consorting was now so terribly chastised, so effectually crushed, it was not probable—scarce possible—they would be encountered again. Certainly not for a season. For weeks there would be weeping and wailing in the tents of the Tenawas. If

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